E-Learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence (ELITE)

The driving vision of the Employee Professional Development Master Plan is to foster participation and remove obstacles so as to provide a rich eco-system of life-long learning opportunities. These opportunities are intended to build skills, inspire and support employees and work teams to reach their fullest potential.

Employee engagement contributes to innovation and organizational effectiveness, which furthers the mission of student success. View the Employee Professional Development Master Plan 2018 – 2020 (PDF, )  for information.

Recommendations for the Professional Development Master Plan fall under a list of broad overarching goals. Implementation updates have been provided for each goal’s associated recommendations. View the Employee Professional Development Master Plan 2018 – 2020 Recommendations and Updates document  (PDF, ) .

Faculty and Staff from MC recently described the concept and processes of the HyFlex distance learning delivery process at the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) conference in Nashville on May 21. Dr. Glenda Hernandez Baca from the Education department and Dr. Buddy Muse of ELITE co-presented with Professor John Bone from Allegany College of Maryland on an emerging modality of online teaching and learning.

The HyFlex concept was developed as a pilot program at MC through a Montgomery College Foundation Innovation Grant for the 2019 fiscal year. The pilot involves ZOOM webcconferencing and Blackboard. The added feature that makes HyFlex unique is that students have the option of attending the scheduled sections in the classroom, or by joining via ZOOM. If neither option is chosen students can view recorded sessions of the classes at a time convenient to them.

Fostering educational innovation and cultural exchange across 6,000 miles, MC representatives participated in a Montgomery County Sister Cities delegation visit to Ethiopia earlier this year. Led by Councilmember Craig Rice, the delegation visited Gondar, Ethiopia, and the University of Gondar. Read full story about Sister Cities Ethiopia Program.

Each semester, full-time faculty in their first, second, and third year at Montgomery College sign up for one workshop series in the Academy. During the Fall 2019 semester, ELITE will offer eight different workshop series for faculty. For additional information, please see the Academy for Teaching Transformation - Fall 2019 Brochure.  (PDF, ) 

ELITE and Montgomery College Innovation Works (MCIW) will once again sponsor a half-day Professional Day Conference for all full- and part-time faculty and instructional staff on Tuesday, August 27, 2019 during Fall Professional Week.

Professor Shinta Hernandez, chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, presented on the Montgomery College United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship that she and Dr. Michael Mills, vice president of the Office of E-Learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence, offered for the first time in Summer 2018.

During the fellowship, faculty created renewable assignments that required their students to become agents of change in the community. The renewable assignments created by faculty fellows required that students tackle a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal through their open pedagogy coursework. The fellowship required that faculty be grouped into interdisciplinary and intercampus teams so that student impact was maximized. The ultimate purpose of the fellowship was to achieve greater social justice in the community in which the work can be freely shared with the broader community.

There were 15 faculty fellows grouped into seven teams across 12 disciplines and three campuses. The open pedagogy assignments were deployed in 16 different courses and 25 sections across the College. Through thes Fall 2018 fellowship, 571 students were impacted by this groundbreaking and transformative work.

To see examples of the student assignments and to learn more about the fellowship, go to https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/offices/elite/unesco/.